It may say that it's February on the
calendar, but my brain is telling me we're still stuck in January.
So in the midst of this 10th or 12th week of
January, I have taken to turning my TV on during the day. And while
I was browsing the dregs of entertainment, I happened upon a new
TV channel. It's called “Dog TV,” and I was invited to try it.
Figuring that some cute dogs romping
around was just what I needed, I gave it a try. Then I gazed in
confusion, tipping my head from one side to the other -- puppy-like -- trying to
determine what exactly was going on. I eventually realized that Dog
TV is not about dogs, it is
for dogs. First there
is a dog sitting on the floor, at camera level, and then, as the dog
looks away, the camera becomes its eyes and we are seeing, presumably, what the dog is seeing. In the segment I was spacing out over, it happened to be a boat sailing on a pond.
Now I had to wonder
if this was something that would really captivate a dog. It was certainly boring to me. And, unlike dogs, I'm pretty restricted to two senses when I'm
watching TV and hence, more easily amused. I would think dogs would just totally ignore a boat on
a pond where they couldn't feel the wind or smell the water or the
shore. And if they couldn't run up and down and bark at it, what
good would it be?
It occurs to me
that whatever crackpot invented this, and those to whom he sold it as
a good idea, had just assumed that we could corrupt dogs the way we
have corrupted our babies. Sit them in front of a TV and they will
become hypnotized. I've done it, and I'm pretty sure you've done it. I did try to limit the number of times I did this to my children, but wasn't it great when you could plop that
kid down and go get something done? But do it even once and you've created a
monster. Turn a TV on anywhere and heads turn and conversation stops,
as does a bunch of brain activity, and you all just sit there and
watch the moving pictures.
This is like the
movie Halloween III. The first time I saw Halloween III, my first
baby was three days old. After her birth, I believed the world had
just changed so dramatically that there would no longer be a need in
my life for the common distraction of television. Until three days
later when, honestly, the thrill of watching my newborn sleep had run its course.
I hadn't ever seen Halloweens I and II, but if you don't know this,
Halloween III for some strange reason doesn't have anything to do
with the first two. The plot is that some dastardly geniuses develop
a program to destroy all the children in the world. They convince
all these children, through the usual means, that they have to watch
TV at this particular time on this particular day because it will be really great. When they do, the evil program is run, and the children sit hypnotized until their brains
burst.
I can't even begin
to tell you how, as a psychologist, this plot has held me in thrall
all these years. And the fact that this movie happened to be on, and
I shifted my attention from my infant daughter to watch it, myself hypnotized, well, it would take a book-length blog to give all those
dynamics the attention they deserve.
My point being that sitting hypnotized in front of the TV is just something we do. You can do this
with kids, you can do this with adults, so I guess it stands to
reason that you can do it with dogs. But my cat, Molly, would have
none of it. She has only once in the over two years we have lived
together been rapt with TV. She sat so immobile while the Winnie the
Pooh movie was on that I was even able to take pictures while she remained oblivious to all but that chubby little cartoon bear.
At night when I usually do my TV watching, she
sits on the arm of my recliner for awhile, but only for the purpose of getting scratched and petted, and when she has had enough of both the petting and the nonsense that I am watching,
she jumps down and settles herself behind the chair where the TV
lights won't annoy her and falls asleep until it's time to wake her
up so we can go to bed. Because staring at this
box of imperfect light and sound is really quite beneath her. She would tell you if she could
that she has far better options for entertainment.
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| Cat TV Channel 1 |
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| Cat TV Channel 2 |
